Tag : Firemen

Dhaka: The deaths of 13 fire fighters - the highest fatalities in a single fire incident - while tackling the blaze and explosions at the Sitakundu BM Container Depot, was due to the lack of proper information and also the wrong way of operating, officials said on Tuesday. According to an official, 150 fire fighters were trained in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia on how to douse chemical fires and identifying chemicals in case of such a fire and have special equipment and chemical protection suits. Skilled fire fighters would not go so near a chemical fire, the official said. The members of this team are stationed at the headquarters and divisional cities. As per the procedure, the fire fighters begin extinguishing the blaze if it is a normal fire. In the case of a chemical fire, the specially-trained hazmat (hazardous materials) unit would go with protective jackets. But none of these 11 trained personnel of the hazmat unit in Agrabad, Chattogram went to Sitakunda industrial area or at Kumira Fire Station, the nearby fire station. Twenty-two normal fire fighters were the first to respond to the fire that broke out in the depot in Chattogram and most of them never made it back. The fire fighters who rushed to BM Container Depot in Sitakunda from two adjacent fire stations were not trained on extinguishing chemical fires. Officials, however, alleged the local fire fighters, without informing the hazmat team in Agrabad, began dousing the blaze considering it a normal fire, as they were not informed about chemical substances at the depot. Hazmat team members only went there after seeing media reports on the explosion. Fire Service officials told the press that they were not informed about chemicals being stored in the depot. If they h ...